Workplace Wellness, And How It Can Boost A Company’’s Stock Performance

By Renu Rangela

Want to improve your company’s stock performance? Try improving your workplace wellness.

Workplace wellness programs not only make workers healthier but also boost productivity and profit margins, besides cutting down healthcare costs. These are the findings of the Vitality Institute, an initiative led by a working group of representatives from major organizations such as IBM, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Merck and Unilever.

After a year of discussion and debate on the best practices for measurement of workforce health, the group has released a report and two health metrics scorecards, reports BizNews.com.

“A healthy workforce is a more productive and profitable workforce, so the health of a company’s employees is extremely relevant to investors, shareholders and boards of directors,” say Dr Derek Yach, chief health officer of Vitality and the chair of the Health Metrics Working Group.

“Sadly, many companies have a better sense of the wear on their machinery than the health of their employees,” he says. According to him, it is time to give workforce health the high-profile visibility it needs.

The importance of workforce health to the financial health of a company has been ascertained by several recent studies. The January 2016 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has cited three studies on the subject.

These three studies had found that the performance index was high in the case of companies that had high-performing workplace wellness programs. Such companies were found to outperform the Standard and Poor’s index by 7 percent to 16 percent per year.

It is important, however, to note that workplace wellness is not just about physical fitness and exercise but also mental health of the employees. Workplace wellness providers are generally dominated by diet, exercise and mindfulness programs. However, innovative companies are looking at more engaging solutions that seek to benefit not only their employees and bottom-line, but also the world, reports the Huffington Post.

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